The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(108)

The crowd roiled against the blockade, burning with a rage that had nowhere to go. Magic sizzled all around. Witchings. Lehrer’s soldiers or Sacha’s? Not a risk Noam was willing to take.

Warehouse twelve. Just get to warehouse twelve.

Dara yanked on his arm and yelled something.

“What?”

“Noam!”

Noam shoved a stranger out of the way and tugged Dara closer, until they were pressed chest to chest by the seething mob, Dara’s breath hot on Noam’s neck and his hair a tangled mess.

“What is it?”

“We have to run!”

“We are running.”

But Dara pulled back against Noam’s grip on his wrist. When Noam got a proper look at his face this time, it was . . . changed. Paler than before, if such a thing were even possible.

“No, we have to—into the quarantined zone,” Dara said. “I can . . . there are people. I can find people. But I’m not going back.”

The mob washed round them like a writhing sea.

“Dara—no. You’re sick.”

“But Lehrer—”

“We’ll figure out what to do about Lehrer later. Right now he’s our best chance at staying alive.”

Noam pulled Dara’s arm again, and this time Dara tipped off-balance, knocking against Noam. He was weak, so weak.

“Quarantined zone,” Dara murmured against Noam’s collarbone, audible only because he was so near. “Go there. I’ll go. Safe. They have a vaccine.”

But he wasn’t fighting Noam’s grip on his waist either. Noam hitched his grasp a little higher, under Dara’s arms, and took an experimental step forward. Dara stumbled along with him.

“Noam,” Dara said. His voice was oddly urgent. Tight, like violin wire.

“It’s okay,” Noam said.

But Dara jerked his arm hard enough that Noam was the one who nearly toppled off-balance this time. Noam looked at him. It was astonishing that Dara was still standing on his own two feet, for all he clung to Noam with both hands.

“I have to go now.”

“Dara, don’t—”

Dara glanced over his shoulder, wild and jumpy as cornered prey. “Listen,” Dara said. “Listen, you have to—listen, now, believe me.”

“No, you listen. You’re sick,” Noam told Dara, clasping his face between both hands so he could hold Dara’s gaze. Dara’s pupils were shot wide. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You can’t go into the quarantined zone—for fuck’s sake, Dara. You’d die there.”

Dara made an agonized noise in the back of his throat, inhuman. His fingers dug into Noam’s arms.

“It’s Lehrer, he, listen—are you? Listening? Noam. Lehrer, he . . . the virus. Do you understand?”

What the hell was Dara going on about? He was starting to wish Dara had never broken free of Lehrer’s apartment. Yeah, Noam would still be under arrest, but at least Dara would be safe: a steroid drip in his arm, a doctor on call.

“There’s a . . . they have . . . vaccine. In the quarantined zone. Understand? Lehrer doesn’t want . . . he said, told me, witching state.”

Dara twisted his fingers into Noam’s hair and yanked him down again, hard enough Noam had to bite back a yelp of pain. Dara held him there with impossible strength. His eyes were so bright, like something feral, something hungry.

Dara said, “Lehrer did it. The virus. Released it. Himself. On his own people. Infected, to make witchings.”

The way he said it was . . . not what Noam expected, somehow. It was low and intense, Dara enunciating every syllable so carefully, like he worried his words would get away from him if he didn’t say them deliberately.

An uneasy wave pitched in Noam’s stomach. “What . . . Dara, what are you saying?”

“Lehrer . . . causes, he causes them. The outbreaks.”

Fevermadness. Wasn’t it?

“He’s a—telepath. Noam. Reads your mind.” Dara gestured violently toward his own temple. He was talking faster now, all of it pouring out of him at once. His cheeks glowed with fever. “Learned it. But only if—only if he—knows you, or something . . . I don’t. Listen to me. He’ll kill me. He, already, he . . .” Dara’s voice cracked.

“It’s okay,” Noam said, but he wasn’t sure he even believed that anymore. His voice sounded like it was coming from very far away, blood moving too fast beneath his skin. Where was Lehrer now? How close? Noam imagined the glittering threads of Lehrer’s magic twining through his every thought, tightening in a hundred impossible knots.

“No, no, now you listen—you—this whole time. The bruises—it was Lehrer. Not Gordon. Lehrer. He—I was fourteen, Noam! I was . . . but he . . . and I couldn’t tell anyone because, god, didn’t even need his power!” Dara laughed, a mad sound, and he wasn’t touching Noam anymore, had both hands pressed up against his own skull. “No one believed me.”

Those words caught between them, butterflies pinned on velvet. There, where Noam had no choice but to look at them. To really look, to see—

All this time. All of it. Everyone Noam knew had burned up in fever because of Lehrer. This whole damn country. And Dara, clutching that secret, afraid to tell Noam in case Lehrer could read his mind and know. Dara’s hatred, which had never been hate at all.